Wing_Leader

No, I've never purchased paragon points. I've only ever purchased two things: the original COH and COV boxed games.

Except that it isn't. The standard paradigm of play in CoX is the standard mission content, and I don't know anyone who has been through ten levels of content, much less 50, who expects to likely fail every new mission the first time through. Even the classic TFs and trials (like the respec trials) are more like normal content than the iTrials in this regard.

The iTrials aren't challenging because they pose difficult problems for us to solve using the tools given to us through the experience of 50 levels of game content. They are challenging because they set failure as the default outcome and make you run the trial over and over, experimenting until you get it right. That's not CoX as I know it. That's the insidious "dungeon raid mentality" from all those other MMOs (which I've tried and hated) infecting CoX.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Around 1 in 20. That's my impression given what I hear day in and day out from people who talk about the iTrials, both on these forums and in game chat.

Quite true. I certainly wasn't complaining so much as simply trying to understand the phenomenon.

However, if you run the Keyes trial a lot, then you'll encounter that blue moon a lot (three times in relatively quick succession on every trial run). I don't think I've ever had the momentary loss of that toggle ruin my day or anything, but it is a little annoying to have to time its reactivation so as not to overlap with the next Obliteration Beam blast...

Believe me, you aren't alone in feeling this way. And take it from me: it's not you that's the problem; you aren't dumb or slow or incompetent, you're just not a trial expert yet. Unfortunately, as you've discovered, a significant portion of the trial-running population has already been through these trials so often that they just race through them as quickly as possible, leaving newbies to keep up as best they can with little or no explanation of what is going on or what they should be doing. But all hope is not lost!

The various strategy guides are must-reads IMO. Running the trials over and over and over will also help, obviously. I have found that unless you do something really dumb (like cause Marauder to leave the Lambda compound, or constantly ignore your sequestering rings, or feed regenerating lichen to the second WarWalker, or pop all the voids when they're nowhere near Penny, etc.), you can usually get away with being only barely useful as you learn how a particular trial works, and nobody will harsh you for it. Of course, the trick is learning what those "dumb" things are so you can avoid doing them. You're ahead of the game, so to speak, because you came here and you now have resources to help you understand what's going on.

Lastly, be very careful about accepting invites to the more "advanced" trials (MoM and TPN) if you are playing a relatively new Incarnate. Level shifts of +2 and +3 are so important to success that going in with a +0 or +1 character is not highly recommended. Don't be surprised if you see a clear bias against +0s and +1s during MoM/TPN recruiting; leaders are just trying to give their leagues a fighting chance, that's all.

I disagree. I feel it is entirely the devs' fault. But that's because I oppose the idea of trials in which critical information you need in order to have any reasonable chance of succeess is kept from you until you go in and, inevitably, fail (multiple times usually). Your own experience is indicative of this. In fact, I submit that the I-failed-it-X-times-before-succeeding-in-the-first-days-of-the-trial is so common as to be normative, leading to an overall first-time success rate in the low single digits. As I've stated in other threads, I consider that a serious design flaw.

In MoM It Is All About High DPS (and therefore Level Shifts)

I'd also like to echo and emphasize the importance of level shifts in MoM. In at least three of the phases, having high dps which is not heavily reduced by the purple patch is essential to success. Against Penny you need the dps to make any headway against her while your meager supply of voids are making her damageable. Against the Shalices you need a combination of good soft control and high dps to keep them from reaching the Well in the center of the room. And in the final fight you need high dps to defeat Mother Mayhem in the three minutes you have available.

So if PuGs are too likely to fill the league with too many +0s and +1s, then that trial should probably be avoided by PuGs. Let that be a lesson to any leader trying to form a MoM league; be sure to stack the deck with as many +2s and +3s as you can, particularly when it comes to your damage dealers. Otherwise the purple patch will mortally hamstring your league during those phases where you can't afford to be low on dps.

This sounds kind of exciting, but I'm not really sure what it means. The implication seems to be that there is a lot more under the surface of the engine (read: potential for major new features) than anyone realizes or knows about. I am somewhat skeptical of this because it is difficult to reconcile how the following two facts, stated in these forums, could be true at the same time:

• The engine is 10 years old and still capable of major new features.
• Features like dynamic mission content and smarter mobs are simply impossible, presumably because the engine is so old and architecturally inflexible (usually phrased as "the engine can't support it").

Same here.

I had previously played four other characters to level 50 and never really fell in love with any of them (see my signature for their ATs and power sets). It wasn't until I made a SJ/WP Brute that I finally found the main I'd always dreamed of. The perfect intersection effectiveness, cool animations (Spinning Strike is just so full of win), and outright "fun factor".

Well, I missed about three years in between the introduction of AE and Freedom. On my first tour of duty I had only ever been through the regular content and the classic TFs. The Hamidon Raid did not sound at all appealing to me, so I never ran it. If the Hami Raid is the template then you're right, the iTrials aren't anything "new" with regards to their puzzle-like approach, but I figured all those years of development since I stopped playing surely was enough time for them to come up with a better way to design "end game raid" type content. Apparently not.

You mean the tv comedy in which the main character was so incompetent that he probably only leveled once or twice during the show's entire run? Yeah, that's a great model for L50+ Incarnates engaged in a war against arch-villains from an alternate Earth dimension.

You said Anti-Matter doesn't regenerate while everyone is held by his "stopping time", which leads me to wonder what the point of it is then. I'm asking an honest question. The paragonwiki says this:

At 80%, 50% and 20% health, Anti-Matter will freeze time momentarily while he approaches one of his regeneration stations.

When you say he doesn't regenerate while time is "stopped", then I must infer that he is able to fly over and reach the regeneration station but then the actual health recovery doesn't begin until the hold is released. Is that right? I guess I always assumed that the regen process started even while we were all held, but if that's not the case, then the only thing stopping time does is allow him to get to the regen station without harrassment. That seems silly since he is able to fly wherever he wants whenever he wants anyway, so why would he bother to hold everyone in place for the trivial purpose of simply flying over to a regeneration station?

I'm not questioning the fact of what you are saying, I'm trying to understand the logic behind the power in light of what you are saying.

I agree completely. I'm just not sure if Maelstrom's Vorpal Judgment falls under this category. I mean, AVs are routinely given powers that no player character can ever obtain; how fair is that? At least in the case of Vorpal Judgment (if I can be permitted to continue to refer to it as such), there is a to-hit chance and normal (smashing?) resistance mitigates its damage, right? Or is Maelstrom's tele-kick autohit and autokill?

When an enemy is given the same powers I have, I don't usually feel too put off by it. I figure I should be willing to take whatever I can dish out...

Really? Hmm. What is he doing while we're all just being held then? I thought he flies over to one of the regen stations and starts regenerating; if he was just stuck in time not doing anything either what would be the point of him using such a power?

By constructing each iTrial as a series of scripted "scenes" that start the same way no matter what the league is composed of or what it does, and which follow a predictable pattern, the devs give us a puzzle that is only challenging until it has been solved and then, like a murder mystery, isn't really interesting anymore. Moreover, a puzzle isn't a challenge if all the tricks to solving it are laid out ahead of time, and so players can't be given a whole lot of up-front information lest it make the puzzle too easy to solve. The mistake, I think, is in having made the iTrials into glorified puzzles rather than dynamic tactical problems.

In many cases, letting players know what to expect doesn't really undermine the challenge factor much at all. For example, knowing about sequestering ahead of time doesn't make it any less potent a weapon. In fact, relying on people not knowing what it is in order to essentially trick them into causing irresistable group holds is weak design. As a tool to reduce dps (forcing melee characters to disengage momentarily) is a neat idea all by itself; the subterfuge of keeping it a secret is not necessary. Moreover, if there was a way for Defenders to "break" the sequestering rings off a leaguemate, much in the same way that healing stops Anti-Matter's disintegration DoT, there would be the added dimension of giving Defenders one more thing that (potentially) draws their time and energy away from other duties.

I would suggest that making the situations more dynamic and the enemies "smarter" would increase the challenge factor considerably. Doing so would mean that leagues have to win by formulating good plans and thinking on their feet as the dynamic behavior of the mobs and the synergy of their powers demands effective improvisation. But for computer game designers that's hard, whereas it is much easier to just gift AVs with autohit, irresistable powers which are not revealed until encountered, and impossible to defend against when they are.

To my mind, the "story" of a trial shouldn't be what is pre-scripted, but should instead be the result of what happened. Give us a premise, a set of starting conditions, clever enemies with (mostly) known abilities (but somewhat unpredictable behaviors), and difficult objectives and let us figure out how to beat it through solid tactical play. Don't put Lambda on rails; don't make the showdown with Marauder always come as a final "phase" that always occurs in the courtyard and always under same conditions. Don't make Keyes a series of three nearly identical dances with the same steps, capped off with a final phase showdown that plays out the same way almost without exception. Make all three reactors simultaneous targets/objectives, and make Anti-Matter present nearly the whole time, causing problems and requiring leagues to formulate methods of containing him until the reactors can be shut down.

I can't help but think that one could refactor the iTrial experience so that the same overall "story" is being told by each one, but with mechanics and enemy behaviors designed to provide challenges without having to turn them into glorified puzzles that can only be solved after having failed them first and having feretted out the necessary tricks along the way. I'd much rather fail a trial because of poor execution of a solid plan (or perfect execution of a flawed plan) than because it was designed to be an information-for-failure exchange program.

I saw someone interpret that as basically Maelstrom's version of Vorpal Judgment. I'm sure that all the countless Nemesis, Carnie, and Longbow mobs I've taken out with Vorpal Judgment feel the same way; that it's a "cheap" one-shot power (that makes my melee character look like a ranged wunderkind). *shrug*

What I think is worse is Anti-Matter's ability to "stop time". There is no preventing it and no defense against it. It happens, three times, with 100% certainty and it works against all characters, no matter what. That is what I call a "cheat" mechanic. Hell, he isn't even really stopping time, he is just paralyzing everyone; everything else in the scenario continues to function (the Oblit Beam, his regen, the trial countdown timer, etc.).

Okay, well, I may be in the minority here but I consider the Hamidon Raid the game's first case in which the devs completely missed the boat on how to construct "end game" content for a superhero game. Virtually nothing about the Hamidon Raid, or its mechanics, looks or feels like a superhero story to me (yes, there are stories where nearly an entire pantheon of heroes bands together to face a cosmic threat, but that basic premise is where the similarities end as far as I'm concerned). It is perhaps the least appealing template for post-50 play I can imagine.

Except that I feel that neither preparation or understanding are available to players going into the iTrials for the first time. The requirements aren't simply higher, they are insurmountable due to lack of information. The only way to get the information critical to succeeding is to go through the trials and see what happens, see what the gimmicks are, and run them multiple times in a series of experiments to see what will actually work. I've never read a superhero comic book where this was the primary narrative paradigm for superheroes deep into their careers.

If this is how the content is supposed to be, then it is a failure of design intent as well as execution, IMO. That makes it difficult for me to get excited about future iTrials. But I'll do them anyway because I want to unlock any new Incarnate slots while I'm still young(-ish). I just wish they weren't designed to make me (or my character) look and feel like a failure.

I know what you mean. But I suspect it is this very phenomenon that led the devs to give us the ability to convert these lower types of salvage to the rarer types. Clearly it isn't the most efficient use of the common and uncommon salvage, but if you have tons of it just lying around, go ahead and start converting them to rares and very rares.

I had a friend who was Incarnating up and he had the very rare he needed for a tier 4, but didn't have the rare he needed for the tier 3 before it. He had lots of extra uncommons, but I couldn't convince him to convert some of them to the rare piece he needed. If he had done that, he could have had his tier 4 power right then and there, but for some irrational reason he kept running trial after trial after trial with his ability at tier 2, waiting for a rare to drop just so he wouldn't be "wasting" his stockpile of commons and uncommons. *shrug*

The thing is, I do not need to run through any normal mission once or twice in order to learn the "tricks" necessary for completing it successfully. Most TFs don't require it either. All the other content in the game can be won or lost, in my experience, entirely on the basis of the competence of the players involved. Not so for the iTrials. The idea that players are expected to come up with effective strategies only after they've experienced the content and (likely) failed it once or twice is a game paradigm I find unappealing.

Like I've said before, it is one thing to come up with a reasonable plan and then fail to execute it well. It is something else entirely when you can't even formulate a proper plan because you don't know half of the gimmicks you will be facing. Not being given the proper information/tools to formulate workable plans is unfairly stacking the deck against the players for no good reason. My recommendation for making content more challenging without handicapping the players with incomplete information is to make the enemies fight smarter, or in unexpected combinations. Make the situations unusual and the enemies a little unpredictable. But for crying out loud, don't rewrite the rules of the bloody game.

This is like everyone becoming highly rated chess masters and then, entering tournaments against computer opponents in which the rules are randomly changed, but you aren't told what rules are changed or how they are changed. You are merely made to witness new moves made by the computer and told that moves you used to be able to make are now prohibited. No opportunities are given to study the new rules ahead of time or develop new tactics for them; you will just have to lose several games, hopefully figure out what went wrong, and try again next time. That might sound like fun to some people, but I bet 99% of ELO rated chess masters would find it a complete waste of their time.

Agreed. But when "lower" hits the depths of first-run iTrials, then something is definitely wrong in my view. I certainly see the value in making iTrials more challenging than the regular content, but they are so different in the degree to which they conceal critical information and resort to gimmicks, that the disconnect is too jarring (and first-time success rates, as compared to regular content, seem to bear this out). The iTrials shouldn't make players feel like they've logged into a different MMO, but that's sort of what it feels like in many ways.

Again, I agree, except that it doesn't apply to the trials, not from my experience. The number one factor in determining success seems to be having at least one person in the league who already knows how to beat the trial (or at the very least avoid the worst aspects of the gimmicky mechanics not found anywhere else in the game) and who can clearly and effectively communicate exactly what to do to everyone else. Player competence alone is simply not enough. There is only so much you can do to adapt to overpowering circumstances you can't anticipate. Many things in these trials are binary: you either plan for them and hopefully succeed, or you don't and almost certainly fail. And if you can't plan for something because you don't know anything about it ahead of time, well, failure is almost assured.

For instance, if you don't know about the Avatar of Hamidon's mag 50 Confuse before going in, you will almost certainly fail, and there is nothing in the trial itself that even warns you about it (as though the story writers decided that the dramatic benefits of keeping the "Big Bad" a Big Secret was more important than giving players a reasonable chance to succeed without complete foreknowledge). I've yet to see a league succeed which did not plan for that ahead of time. In fact, UG is widely regarded as an utter waste of time if there aren't three or four players armed with t3 or t4 Clarion. Prior to the UGT, I bet Clarion was an infrequently chosen Destiny power, and so leagues were ill-equipped to deal with the Avatar. After running it a few times, the equation became very clear: have (sufficient) Clarion or expect to lose.

I know the devs don't let us in on the results of their data mining, but the way I hear the iTrials described around here, combined with my own experience of TPN and MoM when they first showed up (I was lucky and missed out on Keyes 1.0, but I know the general feelings towards it), leads me to feel that single-digit success rates for first runs would not be even a little bit surprising.

I mean, I still end up on leagues every now and then that fail BAF and Lambda even though most players know exactly what to do by now. The fact that it only takes a few clueless players, insufficiently briefed on what to do, to fail even the "simple" trials says a lot about what to expect from a league that is doing a new trial for the very first time and knows nothing about its tricks and gimmicks (yet).

At one time or another I have played (i.e., subscribed and played for many months) WoW, LotRO, Aion, DCU and others. I am quite familiar with all the ways in which MMOs fail epically in their design. The fact that CoX has shed a number of the least appealing elements of typical MMO design is one of the reasons I continue to play it long after having abandoned the others. But the iTrials still carry a bit of the stench of the "end game raid" concepts that make those other MMOs unpleasant. You're right, we have it "easy" compared to them, but there is still a lot of room for improvement IMO.

When you run new characters through the 1-50 content, what do you estimate your chances of success are on any given mission? When was the last time you actually failed a regular mission? When you did the new Positron TF for the first time, what were the odds of success in your mind going in?

After 50 levels of content, including TFs, players rightfully believe that they have the tools to enter a trial and insure decent odds of success. Not automatic 100% odds of success. But something reasonably good; something perhaps close to 50%, with odds improving the better their plan and its execution. And yet, what is the first-time success rate is for the iTrials? Low single-digit percentage, at best?

Why is that rate so low? The reason, I feel, has nothing to do with player incompetence or unrealistic player expectations, and everything to do with scenarios that deny any reasonable chance of success by deliberate design. The trials don't just throw challenging problems at you, they make too many of the success vectors reveal themselves only as a consequence of failure. And that is what I categorically dislike about them.